BS 476 
.N4 
Copy 1 



THE CHARGE 



INAUGURAL ADDEESS 

DELIVKRED ON OCCASION OF THE INDPCTION OF 

REV, W. G. T. SHEDD, D.D., 

AS PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN TEE UNION 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY^ NEW YORK, 

JANUARY 11, 1864. 




PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OP THE BOARD OP DIRECTORS. 



NEW YORK : 
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET 

1864. X 



) 



BS 476 
.N4 
Copy 1 



THE CHAEGE 



OAUGURAL ADDRESS 



DKLIVERED ON OCCASION OF THIS INDUCTION OF 

EEV. W: G. Tf SIIEDD, D.D., 



AS PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN THE UNION 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK, 



JANUAFwT 11, 18(54. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS. 



NEW YORK : 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET, 

1864. 



^^.^ 



IN EXCHANGB 

"-*«v, J^J_ S^^ 

12 



Job. p. Tkow, PriDtrr, 50 Greene elrcel. 






INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



The Inauguration of the Eev. W. G. T. Shedd, D.D., into the Chair 
of "Biblical Literature," in the Union Theological Seminarj, took place 
in the Madison Square Church, on Monday evening, Jan. 11, 1864. 
Chaeles Butlee, Esq., Vice-President of the Board of Directors, pre- 
sided on the occasion, and put the constitutional questions to the Pro- 
fessor elect. The services were opened with prayer hy the Eev. 
Dr. Peentiss. After the Induction of Professor Shedd, the following 
Charge was delivered in behalf of the Directors by the Eev. William 
Adams, D.D., of New York. 



CHARGE; 

By key. WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. 

The services of this occasion invite general con- 
gratulation. The Directors and patrons of the Union 
Theological Seminary congratulate themselves and the 
cause of sacred letters on a new accession to its 
teaching Faculty. May we not also extend our 
fraternal congratulations to him now inducted into a 
Professorship associated with nothing but high and 
calm and holy studies ? It is an honor to belong to 
the " Commonwealth of Scholars " in any of its 
departments ; but theirs is a peculiar dignity and 
delight who are permitted to give the whole of life 
to the study of that "Word, which communicates in 
human languages the mind of God to the world. 
Not to mention those still living engaged in this 
service, memory recalls many whose names, influence 
and honors are fresh and fragrant, whom our country 
and the world "will not willingly let die:" your 
immediate predecessor, Edwaed Eobinson, on whose 



\ 



VI 



tomb the cypress weath Las scarcely withered, whose 
fame belongs to both Continents; his instructor and 
ours, Moses Stuaet, darum et venerabile nomen, 
the father of Biblical Literature in its modern revi- 
val in our land ; Addisoit Alexander ; and that rare 
specimen of Christian scholarship, whose holy enthu- 
siasm and honest thoroughness in all good and gen- 
erous knowledge were equalled only by his unaf- 
fected modesty, Bela B. Edwaeds. There is only 
one sense in which such men can be said to die. 
Their forms, their voices pass out of the reach of our 
senses, as the stars by day ; but their books, their 
instructions, their noble emulation stiU live, speaking 
to us and helping us, even as the same stars, invisible 

but not extinct, exert their constant attraction upon 
the earth. 

It is also an occasion for congratulation that the 
present auspices of Biblical scholarship are so far in 
advance of former times. We neither forget nor 
disparage the labors of our ancestors. We recaU, 
with special honor, the prodigies of Biblical learning 
who lived in the seventeenth century— Walton 
Lightfoot, Usher, Castell, Selden, Poole, and Poeock 
The early ministers of New England were the con- 
temporaries and associates of these distinguished 
scholars at the English Universities, and shared their 
zeal and proficiency in Oriental studies. Several 
of the Semitic languages were included in the 
course of study in Harvard College from its very 
origin. Sewall, the Hancock Professor at Harvard 



was the autlior of a Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, 
tlie correspondent of Kennicott, and Ms Greek 
Odes attracted no little attention in Great Britain. 
These studies afterward passed into general desue- 
tude during the reign of metaphysical theology, 
under the leadership of Butler and Edwards. After 
all that has been done in and by the past, it will not 
be disputed that at no time in the history of the 
world were there so many facilities and inducements 
for a thorough knowledge of the original Scriptures, 
and all cognate sciences, as the present. Observe 
the number who have addicted themselves to these 
studies, and the results of these studies in Lexical 
and Grammatical authorities. Fifty years ago, how 
meagre the helps of a student in Hebrew or Hebrew- 
Greek ! What an interval between Buxtorf, Schleus- 
ner and Parkhurst ; and Passow,Wahl, Winer, and Ge- 
senius. The number of Hebrew and Greek Lexicons, 
with significations rendered in German and English, 
instead of Latin, as was the previous method, is an 
indication of the increased numbers who use them 
in their respective countries. In the celebrated cor- 
respondence of Hon. Charles Fox with Gilbert Wake- 
field, at the beginning of the present century, when 
the latter had projected a Greek and English Lexicon, 
the former, with many wishes for its success, express- 
ed the doubt [whether there were persons enough 
speaking the English language to justify such an un- 
dertaking ; the use of the Latin, the common lan- 
guage of scholars in all countries, insuring a wider 



VIU 



circulation and sale than if limited to any one of 
the modern languages. Not to speak of the compre- 
hensive Lexicons of Planche, Schneider, Picker- 
ing, Liddell and Scott, more copies of Kobinson's 
" Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament " 
were sold, in its first edition, than Mr. Fox believed, 
in the year 1800 could be disposed of among all 
English readers of the Greek throughout the world. 
As to the expediency of continuing the use of Latin 
in lexicography and classical criticism,* or deciding 
which language should have the precedency in the 
order of the study, f the Latin or Greek, these are 
points which it would be impertinent to discuss on 
this occasion; but the fact that there are now so 
many Hebrew and Greek Lexicons in our modern 
vernacular tongues, is a proof of the increasing num- 
bers who are addicted to the study of these immortal 
languages. 

Though it would be a very meagre induction of 
what belongs to the Professorship of Biblical Litera- 
ture, to confine its range to the pedagogic teaching 
of Greek and Hebrew syntax, yet it having pleased 
God to make use of these languages for the purposes 
of one complete revelation, it is instructive to ob- 
serve how they were prepared, by special arrange- 
ments, for this honored service. Never let it be 
forgotten that Christianity, in all stages of its dis- 

* ViD. the Preface of the " Port Royal Grammar " for a discussion 
of this subject, in 1676. 

t ViD. Wyttenbach, vol. 1, p. 550. 



IX 



closures, is a religion of facts. The process by which 
the documents containing the record of this history- 
have been transmitted to us, and proved to be gen- 
uine, is familiar to all well-informed persons. But it 
is of interest to notice that this history is woven 
into the very languages chosen to be the vehicles of 
divine revelation. The purpose of God in the first 
ages, we are informed, was to seclude one people to 
be the depositaries of the true religion. That people 
had a language which favored the intention. It kept 
itself free from foreign corruptions. When that 
people dwelt in Egypt, where, we are told, they lived 
apart, the evidence of that separation is in the very 
language which they bring back with them, — ^the 
simple, uncorrupted language of their fathers. Their 
national and ecclesiastical polity culminated in the 
days of David and Solomon ; at the same time was 
it that their language flourished most gloriously in 
those Psalms and manifold poems, which are still 
preserved as the crown jewels of the church and 
kingdom of our Lord. But when it suited the pur- 
pose of God that this Hebrew isolation, having sub- 
served its use, should cease, and the nation was 
sent into captivity, emptied from one vessel into 
another, that very fact is wrought into their language. 
The later books of the Old Testament show the 
effect which had been produced on the Hebrew 
tongue by this connection with foreign nations. The 
book of Daniel is essentially Chaldaic. Not to speak 
of the square characters in which the later Hebrew 



was Trritten, — derived from the Chaldeans, — the 
historic residence of the Hebrews among that people 
for the greater part of a century, is attested by 
the language in which their annals are written; 
and at length, when the Hebrew nationality and 
polity were to be merged into a new economy, one 
universal religion, — Christianity for all the nations, — 
that fact is patent in the relations of the Hebrew 
tongue to the Greek, forming a new combination, 
and in the extraordinary manner in which the 
Greek was prepared, modified, and used for this 
distinctive agency. Not only was Greek the lan- 
guage of international intercourse, acquiring this 
universality in a long series of events, but it had 
itself passed through several modifications which had 
fitted it for the special use by which it was to be 
immortalized in connection with the one revealed 
religion of the world. No one at all acquainted with 
the Greek classics has failed to observe the difference 
between their style and the Greek of the New Tes- 
tament. The peculiarity of the former is the artistic 
construction of its sentences, — ^intricate, complex, in- 
volved, like an ivory cabinet, till the discovery of its 
nominative gives you the key for unlocking the 
mechanism, and admiring the ingenuity and beauty 
of its rhetoric. Language constructed on such a 
principle, like any other work of art, a picture by 
Zeuxis, a piece of statuary by Appelles, is an object 
of admiration, but altogether unsuited to the pur- 
poses of a universal revelation. Nevertheless, by all 



XI 

these elaborate processes, the Greek language was 
wrought into most wonderful ductility, precision, and 
perspicuity, making it capable of conveying the 
nicest shades of thought, the most exact philosoph- 
ical distinctions * 

Look now at the Greek of the New Testament* 
It is not the artistic Greek of the schools. It is not 
the stately language of Plato and Aristophanes, 
reminding you of the tessellated courts of kings. But 
it is this expressive, ductile, clean-cut, and beautiful 
language, as it was acquired by men of the Hebrew 
stock, who infused into it certain qualities of their 
own vernacular, forming, by the new combination, a 
language to the last degree suited to be translated 
easily and correctly into all other languages spoken 
among men. Nothing in the Evangelists is involved. 
There are no long and intricate sentences. The 
Greek of the New Testament, it has often been said, 
is more easy to be read than that of any other book. 
The reason is, that thoughts and words are pre- 
sented in their natural order — the Hebrew method, 
the subject foremost, — -just as children talk, — in dis- 
tinction from the studied modes of rhetoric art. 
There were more reasons than one why the Evange- 
lists were chosen from an uneducated class. Prob- 
ably it may not have occurred to themselves, when 
dictating or writing their immortal annals, that in 
using the language which, by arms, and schools, and 

* " The finest ever spoken by mortals." — Sir Wm, Jones, Preface to 
Isseus. 



zu 



commerce, had acquired more extension than any- 
other, they were using it in such a simple, childlike, 
and unartistic manner, that it was inimitably adapted 
to polyglottic translations. With the probable ex- 
ception of Luke, the Apostle Paul was the only one 
of the New Testament writers who had a scholastic 
education. His was a peculiar office, to arrange in a 
more scientific form the doctrines of the Christian 
system, as based upon the facts recorded by the 
Evangelists. His speech before the Academicians at 
Athens, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of 
Acts, the Greek of which, suited to his peculiar 
audience, more closely resembles the Attic style than 
any other passage in the New Testament, and the 
masterly method of the Epistles to the Romans and 
the Hebrews, in which, by the infusion of He- 
braistic ideas, the Greek is made to bear a new sense, 
unknown to its classic academies, these are only 
additional evidences of the extraordinary manner in 
which the great Apostle, a Hebrew by birth and 
religion, yet educated in the art of mental manage- 
ment, and the vernacular use of the Greek language 
at the University of that Greek city in which he was 
born, was qualified for his peculiar service as a prop- 
agandist of the one universal religion of our species. 
So many are the topics suggested by this occa- 
sion, that I perceive the danger of transgressing 
upon the proprieties of the hour. In performing the 
service assigned me by the Directors of the Seminary, 
decorum requires that the amplest time should be 



XIU 



allotted to him just inaugurated into his office, for 
the utterance of his own thoughts and intentions. 
I hasten, therefore, to express the wishes of those 
through whom he has received his appointment, in 
reference to the discharge of his official duties. 
First of all, we charge you to revere, honor, and by 
every method exalt the Scriptuees of the Old and 
New Testaments as the one, only written reve- 
lation of God. This volume, in this regard, has 
no predecessor, equal, or successor. Inspired by its 
Author, it is the standard of ultimate appeal in all 
matters of belief and practice. As this revelation is 
communicated in certain languages, chosen and pre- 
pared for the purpose, you are to be thoroughly 
acquainted with those languages, and require a simi- 
lar knowledge of all resorting to your instructions. 

Christian Theology has for its basis a correct 
interpretation of inspired language. '* Tkeologus in 
Scripturis nascitur^'' is the incontrovertible aphorism 
of our profession. The department of Biblical Lit- 
erature supplies the foundation and the material for 
the edifice reared by the theologian. This material 
is to be collected by the rigid honesty of syntax and 
exegesis. Though your previous studies in the de- 
partment of dogmatic theology and doctrinal history 
will be of immense advantage to you in your present 
office, yet it has already occurred to you that, as an 
exegete, you must hold in abeyance all which ancient 
and modern teachers have held concerning specific 
doctrines, while you are engaged in the endeavor to 



XIV 



ascertain tlie simple meaning of the original text. 
That meaning well defined according to tlie proper 
construction of words, the way is prepared for the 
systematizing of doctrines, for defending and illus- 
trating them by history, philosophy, and varied 
learning. In its proper place and connection, noth- 
ing can be more serviceable than an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the history of opinions. Had the 
researches of older scholars, particularly of Heng- 
stenberg, as to the Pentateuch, been familiar to the 
Bishop of Natal, he would have recognized his recent 
objections among the sjpolia opima long ago hung up 
in the depository of historic Christianity. The Old 
and the New Testaments are organically united. 
They are not attached by artificial ligatures. An 
assault on the Pentateuch is a blow at the Evange- 
lists. De Wette was right when he openly declared 
that the mythical interpretation applied to the books 
of Moses, must also be employed with reference to the 
New Testament. Strauss's/' Life of Jesus " is a logical 
correspondency to the Hebrew Mythology of Bauer. 
The method, which some have adopted in regard to the 
Exodus and the passage of the Red Sea, applied to the 
Gospels, would annul the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
Special importance is attached to this di- 
rection concerning the authority of the Inspired 
Volume, because of the peculiar character of that 
period of time and thought through which we 
are now passing. This is not the age of Polem- 
ics, as in the formative period of the Christian 



XV 



history; nor of Scholasticism, when philosophy- 
sought to systematize truth after its own methods ; 
nor yet of Symbolism, as when political and ecclesi- 
astical forces strove to adjust conflicting confessions ; 
ours is the age of Criticism, when Naturalism asserts 
its own construction of the facts which, as we believe, 
lie at the basis of our religion. With no sympathy 
with the ill-advised zeal of those who would inter- 
dict science through fear of its antagonism to 
faith ; holding, on the other hand, that the legitimate 
deductions of one science are not to be overruled by 
sideling inferences from another, — than which noth- 
ing can be more impertinent and unphilosophical,* 
you will address yourself to your own noble and 
independent science — for if anything deserves to be so 
called, it is the canons of criticism, — exulting in the 
confident belief that the result of all knowledge will 
be to harmonize the facts of nature and supernatur- 
alism, to confirm and not to disturb faith in the divine 
origin of Revelation, so that] Science and Religion, 
hand in hand, may bend at the same altars, and find 
their last induction, their common inspiration in Bib- 
lical Christianity. 

To specify the hermeneutic rules by which you 
will be guided in your work, would be to write a 
volume like that of Morus or Ernesti, rather than a 
brief address. Permit me to mention one which is 
comprehensive and paramount. In the interpretation 

* ViD. " Spiritual Christianitj," by Isaac Taylor, p. 25. 



XVI 



of a book containing sucli a variety of style and 
metliod, — ^historic, poetic, didactic, symbolic, precep- 
tive, prophetic, and epistolary, — ^some guides there 
jnust be helping one to the true sense of what is for- 
mally so diversified. Especially when it is admitted 
that in the New Testament the Greek language is 
made the vehicle of ideas which it never conveyed 
before, some aid there must be which is more than 
that of lexicons and grammars. When we have 
emphasized the prerequisite of a sound judgment, 
familiarly known as common sense, in distinction 
from all mystic and mythical methods, let us remem- 
ber that there is a spiritual discernment, which is 
more than erudition, and which God has promised 
even unto babes. The true interpretation of Scrip- 
ture must be that which the Author of the Scrip- 
tures puts upon his own words, and which he com- 
municates to him who seeks it with filial prayer. 
This " quick understanding " is a temper rather than 
a faculty. It is like antennae to the mind, a sensi- 
tive power by which it feels its way easily and 
promptly through passages manifold and labyrin- 
thine, where pride and self confidence grope and stum- 
ble. That the interpreter of the Bible should be in 
personal sympathy with the Bible, would seem to be 
the first and indispensable qualification of an exegete. 
His ofiice is not to create, but to receive. The giant 
Polyphemus was blind. It matters essentially through 
what door, by what experience, with what intent a 
scholar makes his entrance into the Christian temple. 



XVll 



Clemens Alexandriims, Grotius, Erasmus, Parr,* De 
Wette, were learned far above the majority of men; 
but many of their inferiors in letters and science, but 
of larger proficiency in the sympathies of Christ's king- 
dom, have caught the meaning of theNew Testament 
^ AvaHalvco6L^^ '"IXaarr^Qcoy^ Ji^acoavvrj, and Hlorcg 
as by a direct discernment of the Spirit, f It will not 
be necessary to multiply words on a topic concerning 
which the Directors and Teachers of this Seminary 
are so entirely agreed. This Institution was conse- 
crated to piety and prayer as well as learning. Too 
much of true science, of solid learning, there cannot 
be. There may be too little of that spiritual devo- 

* The " Practical Christianity " of Wilberforce was entirely misap- 
prehended by the learned Grecian who assaulted it as with a catapult. 

t Great interest attaches to the following extract from Bishop Hors- 
ley... A proficient in science, the Editor of the Works of Sir Isaac New- 
ton, of Castilian stateliness, this distinguished prelate was never sus- 
pected of any sympathy either with ignorance or enthusiasm. " I will not 
scruple to assert that the most illiterate Christian, if he can but read his 
English Bible, and will take the pains to read it in this manner, — by a 
collation, diligent and prayerful^ of its parallel passages, — will not only 
attain all that practical knowledge which is necessary to his salvation, 
but, by God's blessing, he will become learned in everything relating to 
his religion in such degree, that he will not be liable to be misled, either 
by the refined arguments or the false assertions of those who endeavor 
to ingraft their own opinions upon the oracles of God. He may safely 
be ignorant of all philosophy, except what is to be learned from the 
sacred books ; which, indeed, contain the highest philosophy adapted 
to the lowest apprehensions. He may safely remain ignorant of all 
history, except so much of the history of the first ages of the Jewish 
and of the Christian church, as is to be gathered from the canonical 
books of the Old and New Testaments. Let him study these in the 
manner I recommend, and let him never cease to pray for the illumina- 
tion of that Spirit by which these hooks were dictated, and the whole 
compass of abstruse philosophy and recondite history, shall furnish no 
argument with which the perverse will of man shall be able to shake this 
learned Christian's faith." — Sermons on the Resurrection, pp. 165, 166. 



XVUl 



tion wLicli is both light and life. Pious affections 
are wondrous helps to that intellection which " know- 
eth all things." The learned and pious Spener, pur- 
suing his Biblical study far into the night, was seen 
by one of his family, himself unseen, as the scholar 
closed his book, reverently to lift his cap from his 
head, and ejaculate as the pith of his devotions, 
" Blessed Jesus, thou and I will never be separated." 
Charging you to be in constant communion with Him 
whose name defines the science you are to teach, it is 
instructive to notice that saintship and scholarship 
have the same point of perspective. While the wise 
men and noble of antiquity, made familiar to us in 
our classical reading, are more and more disconnected 
from all our personal interests, receding continually 
into the mists and obscurities of a legendary past, He, 
the Living Cheist, is drawing nearer to us every 
day, the outlines of his person becoming more dis- 
tinct to the eye, the central life of all history, the 
radiant focus of all truth, the unity of all sciences, 
the end and value of all pursuits, the sum of all 
things, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

May God enable you, my dear brother, so to 
prosper in this "high calling" as a teacher of divine 
truth, that a long succession of faithful men, educat- 
ed by your wisdom, animated by your example, shall 
remember you with gratitude as they shall translate > 
interpret, and teach the Bible to their fellow men all 
over the earth. 



BIBLICAL EXEGESIS: ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE THEOLO- 
GIAN AND PREACHER, 



AN 

IMUGMAL ADDRESS, 

By rev. WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D. 

The opening of one of the most sagacious and 
suggestive of modern treatises in philosophy reads as 
follows: "Man, as the minister and interpreter of 
nature, does and understands as much as his observa- 
tions on the order of nature, either with regard to 
matter or to mind, permit him, and neither knows 
nor is capable of more." * In this dictum of Lord 
Ba<;on, which he lays down as the corner stone of his 
philosophical system, reflecting and speculating man 
is represented to be an interpreter. The function of 
the philosopher is not to originate truth, but to ex- 
plain it. He is to stand up before a universe of 
matter, and a universe of mind, and his office is to in- 
terrogate them, and hear what they say. He is not 
to attempt an exertion of his own power upon them 
in order to reconstruct them, and thereby put a 
meaning into them. He is not to distort them, by 
injecting into them his own prejudices and precon- 
ceptions ; but simply going up to them with reverence 

* Bacox : Novum Organum, Aph. 1. 



and with freedom, lie is to take tliem just as tliey 
are, and to question them just as they stand, until he 
gets tlieir answer. The spirit of a philosopher, then, 
according to this sagacious Englishman, is no other 
than the spirit of an interpreter. If we might em- 
ploy his own proud phrase, "Francis Verulam thought" 
that the great aim and office of philosophy is lierine- 
neutical. The result of all speculative inquiry into 
the world of matter and of mind, according to this 
wise and substantial thinker, should be an exegesis^ 
an explanation. Under the impulse and guidance of 
this theory, modern science, more particularly in the 
sphere of material nature, has made progress. That 
wise and prudent interrogation of nature which has 
been so characteristic of the last two centuries has 
yielded a clear and loud response. The world of 
matter has replied to many of the questions that 
have been put to it. The stone has cried out of the 
wall, and the beam out of the timber has answered. 

But if this is true and fruitful in philosophy, it is 
still more so in theology. The duty and function of 
the theologian is most certainly that of an interpreter, 
and that alone. "With yet more positiveness may we 
adapt the phraseology of the opening sentence of the 
Novum Organum, and say : " Man, as the minister 
and interpreter of revelation, does and understands 
as much as his observations on the order and struc- 
ture of revelation permit him, and neither knows nor 
is capable of more." For revelation is as much the 
product of the Divine intelligence, as the worlds are 



the product of the Diviae power. Man confessedly 
did not originate the world, and neither did man 
originate the Christian Scriptures. The ultimate au- 
thorship of each alike carries us back to the Infinite. 
For though in the propagation of the species, and 
the sustentation of animal life upon the planet, the 
creature oftentimes seems to have an agency analo- 
gous to that of the creator himself, yet we well 
know that all things in the material universe are of 
God ultimately ; so, likewise, though in the produc- 
tion of those documents which make up the canon of 
inspiration, many individual men were employed 
with a freedom and spontaneousness that looks like 
original authorship, yet it was the infinite and all- 
knowing intelligence of God which is the head- 
spring, i]ie fans fontiuni of it all. 

The attitude, therefore, of the human mind 
toward revelation, should be precisely the same as 
toward nature. The naturalist does not attempt to 
mould the mountains to his patterns ; and the theo- 
logian must not strive to pre-configure the Scriptures 
to his private opinions. The mountain is an object^ 
positive, fixed, and entirely independent of the eye 
that looks upon it ; and that mass of truth which is 
contained in the Christian Scriptures is also an object^ 
positive, fixed, and entirely independent of the indi- 
vidual mind that contemplates it. The crystalline 
humor of the eye is confessedly passive in relation to 
the mountain mass that looms up before it in majesty 
and in glory. It receives an impression and expe- 



6 



riences a seDsation, not mecbanically or chemically 
indeed as wax melts before fire, or as an alkali 
effervesces under an acid, yet inevitably, and in ac- 
cordance with the real and independent nature of 
the mountain. And the moral mind of man, in re- 
lation to the moral truth of God which is set over 
against it in his revelation, should in like manner be 
recipient, and take an impression that issues inevita- 
bly from the nature and qualities of fixed and eter- 
nal truth. Neither in the instance of the eye nor of 
the mind, is the function that of authorship or origina- 
tion ; it is that of living recipiency and acquiescence. 
In the presence of both nature and revelation, man, 
as Lord Bacon phrases it, is a minister and interpre- 
ter, and not a creator and lord. 

We have naturally fallen into this train of re- 
mark, as an introduction to the subject which we 
propose to discuss upon the present occasion. Sum- 
moned by the guardians of this Theological Semi- 
nary to give instruction in the department of Biblical 
Interpretation, it is our duty to consider the office of 
an interpreter; to discuss the nature and influence of 
an exegetical talent and spirit. 

The etymology of the term (t^riyto^ai) implies 
that exegesis is the leading forth into the light of a 
clear perception, of an idea that is shut up in human 
language. It supposes words, — words that are filled 
with thoughts that require to be conducted from be- 
hind the veil which covers them. Exegesis, there- 



fore, implies a written word. It supposes a written 
revelation. There cau be no interpretation unless 
thought has been vocalized and fixed in outward 
symbols. An unwritten revelation, confined to the 
individual consciousness, never projected into lan- 
guage and never taking a literary form, could not be 
an object of critical examination, and could not yield 
the rich fruits of analysis and contemplation. Those 
theorizers who combat the doctrine of a "book 
revelation," and contend for only an internal and sub- 
jective communication from the mind of God to the 
mind of man, present a theory which, if it were 
transferred to the sphere of human literature, would 
bring all intellectual investigation and stimulation to 
a dead stop. If all the thinking of man were confined 
to consciousness ; if his ideas were never expressed 
in language, and written down in a literature that is 
the outstanding monument of what he has felt and 
thought; if within the sphere of secular thinking 
man w^ere limited to his isolated individualism, and 
were never permitted to ^x his eye and mind upon 
the results to which fellow minds had come; the 
most absolute stagnation would reign in the intellec- 
tual world. If, for illustration, we could conceive 
that the intellect of Newton had been able to go 
through those mathematical processes which are now 
embodied in his Principia, without expressing them 
in the symbols of mathematics and the propositions 
of human language; if we could conceive of the 



8 



Priucipia as held in his individual consciousness mere- 
ly, and never presented in an outward form to be- 
come a xTTj/ua tg dtl for all generations ; it is plain 
that the name of Newton would not be, as it now is, 
one of the intellectual forces and influences of the 
human race. All that mass of pure science which 
has been the subject-matter of mathematical exegesis 
for two centuries, and which has been the living germ 
out of which, by the method of interpretation, the 
fine growths of modern mathematics have sprung, 
would have gone into eternity and invisibility with 
the spirit of Newton, and "left not a rack behind." 

I. Biblical Interpretation, therefore, postulates a 
written word, and a sacred literature ; and in now 
proceeding to notice some of the influences that issue 
from it, we mention, in the first place, the originality 
which it imparts to religious thinking and discourse. 
We shall maintain the position, that the theologian 
and the preacher, both alike, are quickened by the 
analytical study of the sacred volume into a freedom, 
freshness, and force, that are utterly beyond their 
reach without it. 

Originality is a term often employed, rarely de- 
fined, and very often misunderstood. It is frequently 
supposed to be equivalent to the creation of truth. 
An original mind, it is vulgarly imagined, is one that 
gives expression to ideas and truths that were never 
heard of before, — ideas and truths " of which the hu- 
man mind never had even an intimation or present!- 



9 



ment, and wliicli come into it by a mortal leap, ab- 
rupt and startling, without antecedents and without 
premonitions.'" But no sucli originality as this is 
possible to a finite intelligence. Such aboriginality 
as this is the prerogative of the Creator alone, and 
the results of it are a revelation^ in the technical and 
strict sense of the term. Only God can create de 
nihilo^ and only God can make a communication of 
truth that is absolutely new. Originality in man is 
always relative, and never absolute. Select, for illus- 
tration, an original thinker within the province of 
philosophy, — select the contemplative, the profound, 
the ever fresh and living Plato. Thoughtfully peruse 
his weighty and his musical periods, and ask yourself 
whether all this wisdom is the sheer make of his in- 
tellectual energy, or whether it is not rather an ema- 
nation and efflux from a mental constitution which is 
as much yours as his. He did not absolutely origin- 
ate these first truths of ethics, these necessary forms 
of logic, the^e fixed principles of physics. They 
were inlaid in his rational structure by a higher au- 
thor, and by an absolute authorship ; and his origin- 
ality consists solely in their exegesis and interpreta- 
tion. And this is the reason that on listening to his 
words, we do not seem to be hearing tones that are 
wholly unknown and wholly unheard of We find 
an answering voice to them in our own mental and 
moral constitution. In no contemptuous but in a 
reverential and firm tone, every thinking person, ev'Cn 



10 



in the presence of tlie great thinkers of the race, may 
employ the language of Job, in reference to self-evi- 
dent truths and propositions : ^^ Lo, mine eye hath 
seen ail this, mine ear hath heard and understood it. 
What ye know, the same do I know also ; I am 
not inferior unto you." '"' And these great thinkers 
themselves are the first to acknowledge this. Upon 
the fact of a community in reason, a partnership in 
the common ideas of humanity, Plato himself found- 
ed his famous argument for the pre-existence of the 
soul. The very fact that every human creature rec- 
ognizes the first truths of science and of morals as no 
strange and surprising dogmas, but native and fa- 
miliar, would imply in his judgment an earlier world, 
a golden time, when their acquaintance was made 
under brighter skies, and under happier omens, than 
here and now. 

Originality, then, within the sphere of a creature 
and in reference to a finite intelligence, consists in the 
power of interpretation. In its last analysis it is exe- 
gesis^ — the pure and accurate exposition of an idea or 
a truth already existing, already communicated, and 
already possessed. Plato interprets his own rational 
intelligence ; but he was not the author of that intel- 
ligence. He expounds his own mental and moral 
ideas ; but those ideas are the handiwork of God. 
They are no more his than ours. We find what he 
found, no more and no less, if he has been a truthful 

* Job xii. 12. 



11 



exegete. The process, in his instance and that of his 
reader, is simply that of education and elicitation. 
There has been no creation, but only a development ; 
no absolute authorship, but only an explication. And 
yet how fresh and original has been the mental pro- 
cess ! The same substantially in Plato and in the 
thousands of his scholars ; and yet in every single in- 
stance there has been all the enthusiasm, all the 
stimulation, all the ebullient flow of life and feeling 
that attends the discovery of a new continent or a 
new star. 

" Then feels he like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken f 
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men. 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,. 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

Originality in man, then, is not the power of 
making a communication of truth, but of apprehend- 
ing one. Two great communications have been made 
to him, — ^the one in the book of nature and the other 
in the book of revelation. If the truth has been con- 
veyed through the mental and moral structure, if it 
has been wrought by the creative hand into the 
fabric of human nature, then he is the most original 
thinker who is most successful in reading it just as it 
reads, and expounding it just as it stands. If the 
truth has been communicated by miracle, by incar- 
nation, and by the Holy Ghost ; if it has been im- 



12 



parted by special inspiration, and lies before Lim an 
objective and written revelation ; then he is the origi- 
nal thinker who is most successful in its interpreta- 
tion, — v\^ho is most accurate in analyzing its living 
elements, and is most genial and cordial in receiving 
them into his own mental and moral being. 

These observations find their enforcement and il- 
lustration, the instant we appl}^ them to the Christian 
Scriptures and their interpretation. We have already 
noticed that, in respect to the problems of religion, 
man can originate nothing, but must take what he 
finds given to him from the skies. Even if revealed 
religion be rejected, man does not escape from the 
authority of fixed truth, unless he adopt atheism and 
an absolute licentiousness of thought and action. The 
doctrines of natural religion are a Divine communica- 
tion, as really as those of revealed. They are as im- 
mutable in their nature, and as independent of man's 
will and prejudices as those of Christianity itself. 
When we wake up to moral consciousness, and begin 
to reflect upon the principles of ethics that are 
wrought into our moral constitution, we discover that 
we are already under their domination and righteous 
despotism. We have no option. Neither can we al- 
ter them ; we cannot make a hair of them white or 
black. We are compelled to take them exactly as 
they are given. We must be passive and submissive 
to what Cudworth denominates the " immutable 
morality" which antedates all finite existence, and 



13 



whicli was in the beginning with God. And so like- 
wise when we pass from the problems of natural reli- 
gion to those of revealed ; when we pass from the ques- 
tion concerning human duty to the awful question 
concerning human salvation, we discover that the prin- 
ciples upon which this salvation reposes, and the meth- 
ods by which it is to be accomplished, are settled in 
the heavens. What is written is written, and man 
the sinner, like man the moralist, must be recipient 
and submissive to the communication that is made. 
For the promises of Christianity are more entirely 
dependent upon the Divine option and volition, than 
are the principles of ethics and natural religion. The 
Deity is necessitated to punish sin, but is under no ne- 
cessity of pardoning it. Wben, therefore, the human 
mind passes from ethics to evangelism, it is still more 
closely shut up to the record which God has given. 
If it must take morality j iist as it is communicated in 
reason and conscience, it must most certainly take 
mercy on the terms upon which it is offered in the 
written word ; because these terms depend solely 
upon the will and decision of the pardoning power. 

In this wise and docile recipiency of that which is 
fixed and eternal, we find the fountain of perennial 
youth and freshness for the theologian and the 
preacher. For by it he is placed in vital relations to 
all that universe of truth which is contained in the- 
Christian Scriptures. Think for a moment of their 
contents. Bring to mind the ideas and doctrines- 



14 



which hang like a constellation in these heavens. 
Think of the revelation made in them concerning the 
trinal unity of God, that infinite vortex of life, being, 
and blessedness, to which the meagre and narrow 
nnit of deism presents such a feeble contrast. Think 
of the incarnation, in which all the plenitude of the 
divine nature blends and harmonizes with the win- 
ning helplessness and finiteness of a creature. Think 
of the ideas that are involved in the Biblical account 
of the origin of man, his fall into the abyss of moral 
evil, and his recovery to innocence, to holiness, and 
to glory. Think of the kingdom of God, an idea 
wholly foreign to the best of the natural religions of 
the world, with its indwelling energy of the Divine 
Spirit, and its continual intercourse with the invisible 
and the eternal. Contemplate these new ideas that 
have been lodged in the consciousness of the hu- 
man race by the Scriptures of the Old and New 
dispensations ; think of their suggestiveness, their 
logical connections, the new light which they flare 
upon the nature and destiny of man, the totally dif- 
ferent coloring which they throw on the otherwise 
dark and terrible history of man on the globe ; weigh 
this immense mass of truth and dogma in the scales 
«©f a dispassionate intelligence, and say if the mind of 
t^e theologian and the preacher will not be filled 
with freshness, with force, and with originality, in 
proportion as it absorbs it. 

For, to recur to our definition of originality, the 



15 



human intellect is stirred into profound and genial 
action, only as it receives an impression from some- 
thing greater and grander than itself. If it adopts 
the egotism of such a theory as that of Fichte, for 
example, and attempts to create from within itself, its 
action must be spasmodic and barren. To employ the 
often repeated comparison of Bacon, it is not the spi 
der but the bee that is the truly original insect. Only 
as the theologian and the preacher, by a critical anal- 
ysis of the^ Biblical words, and their connections, sat- 
urates his mind with the Biblical elements {arotxtla)^ 
and feeds upon revelation as the insect feeds upon 
foliage until every cell and tissue is colored with its 
food, will he discourse with freedom, suggestiveness, 
and energy. 

The influence of such familiarity with revelation 
is well illustrated by that of the great products of 
uninspired literature. The effect of a continual and 
repeated perusal of Homer in animating the mind is 
well known. It starts the intellect into original ac- 
tion. The Greek fire glows in these poems, and kin- 
dles everything it touches. Though the range of 
ideas in the Iliad and Odyssey is cabined, cribbed, 
and confined, compared with that of a Dante or a 
Shakspeare, whose intuition has been immensely 
widened by the Christian revelation under which he 
lived and thought ; though the old epic in which the 
fall of Troy is sung cannot compare for a moment in 
breadth, depth, and vastness with the Christian epic 



16 



in which the fall of man is told, yet every scholar 
knows that just in proportion as he imbibes the ideas 
and spirit of this single pagan poem, all tameness 
is banished from his own ideas, and all feebleness 
from his language. The reader of Gibbon's autobi- 
ography will notice in the abstract which the histo- 
rian gives of his readings, that day after day the ap- 
pointed task of perusing so many lines of the Iliad is 
recorded as having been faithfully performed. And, 
moreover, he will observe that the study is done in 
the light of the Port Koyal Greek Grammar ; in the 
light of a careful investigation and mastery of the 
Greek verb.'^ Now, we venture to affirm that what 
there is of energy in the monotonous style of Gibbon, 
and what there is of originality and freshness in his 
naturally phlegmatic and heavy understanding, is 
due, in no small degree, to familiarity with the old 
bard of Chios. The French critic Bouchardon 
tells us that while reading Homer his whole frame 
appeared to himself to be enlarged, and all surround- 
ing nature to be diminished to atoms. We have cited 
this as only one example of the impulse to original ac- 
tion that is started in the mind, by the simple exege- 
sis and interpretation of one truly grand product of 
the human mind. Think of a similar contact with 
the Italian Dante, or the English Chaucer, and say 
whether originality is to be acquired by a dead lift, 
or by a genial pressure and influence. 

Gibbon : Autobiography, p. 444, et passim. 



17 



Returning now to tlie Christian Scriptures, we 
claim that they are the great and transcendent 
source of originality and power for the human intel- 
lect. The examples which we have cited from the 
range of uninspired literature fall far short of the 
reality, when we pass to the written revelation of 
God. Though grouped together in the most artless 
and unambitious manner ; though the work of divers 
ages and different minds ; though showing a variety 
and inequality that passes through the whole scale of 
composition, from the mere catalogue in the book of 
Chronicles, to the sublime ode in Isaiah or the Apoc- 
alypse ; though, so far as mere artistic form and la- 
bored attempt at impression are concerned, almost 
careless and indifferent, nevertheless the body of lit- 
erature contained in the Hebrew and Greek Scrip- 
tures has moved upon the mind of man, in his 
generations, as the moon has moved upon the sea. 
The influence has been tidal. 

" Exegesis," says Mebuhr, " is the fruit of finished 
study." This is a remark which that great historian 
makes in his letter to a young philologist, which de- 
serves to be perused annually by every student, sec- 
ular or sacred. " Do not read the great authors of 
classical antiquity," he remarks, " in order to make 
aesthetic reflections upon them, but in order to drink 
in their spirit, and fill your soul with their thoughts, — 
in order to gain that by reading which you would 
have gained by reverently listening to the discourses 
2 



18 



of great men. This is the philology which does 
the soul good ; and learned investigations, even when 
we have got so far as to be able to make them, al- 
ways occupy an inferior place. We must be fully 
masters of grammar (in the ancient sense) ; we must 
acquire every branch of antiquarian knowledge, as 
far as lies in Qur power ; but even if we can make 
the most brilliant emendations, and explain the most 
difficult passages afc sight, all this is nothing, and 
mere sleight of hand, if we do not acquii-e the wisdom 
and spiritual energy of the great men of antiquity — ■ 
think and feel like them." * Precisely this is the 
aim and influence of Biblical philology and exegesis. 
The theologian and preacher, by his patient study of 
the written revelation, must gain that by reading 
which he would have gained by reverently listening 
to the discourses of the prophets, and apostles, and 
the incarnate Son of God. And this is the uniform 
effect of close linguistic investigation. The power of 
a grammarian is a vernacular power. Turn, for illus- 
tration, to the commentaries of some of the Greek 
Fathers, as Theodoret and Chrysostom, for example, 
and observe the close and vivid contact which is 
brought about between their minds and those of the 
sacred writers, by reason of their homebred knowl- 
edge of the Greek language. These commentators 
are not equal to some of the great Latin Fathers, in 
respect to the insight that issues from a profound 

* NiEBunR : Life and Letters, pp. 426, 428. 



19 



dogmatical comprehension of Christian truth. So 
far as interpretation rests upon the analogy of faith 
and a comprehensive system, Chrysostom is inferior to 
Augustine. But in regard to everything that depends 
upon the callida junctura verhorum^ upon the subtle 
nexus of verbs, nouns, and particles, these exegetes 
who were " native and to the manor born " must ever 
be the resort and the guide of the Biblical stu- 
dent."^ 

Now, such an exegesis as this, — an exegesis of 
the Scriptures that is the result of "finished" study, 
and that fills the soul with the very thoughts and 
spiritual energy of the holy men of old who spake 
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, — ^is a 
well-spring of originality. The influence of it 
i3 strikingly illustrated by a comparison of the 
English pulpit of the 16th and 17th centuries, with 
that of the 18th. The minds of Hooker and Howe, 
the two great representatives of the Established and 
Non-Conforming churches, were thoroughly imbued 
with the substance and spirit of the written revela- 
tion. It was an age of belief, of profound religious 
convictions, of linguistic, reverent, and contemplative 
study of the word of God. Secular literature itself 
was tinctured and tinged with the supernaturalism of 
the Bible. The plays of Shakspeare, nay, the licen- 
tious plays of the Old English stage, are full of the 

* This remark holds true of that acute Greek commentator of the 
12th century, Euthymius Zigdbenus^ whom De Wette and Meyer so 
often quote. 



20 



awful workings of conscience. If men sinned, tbey 
suffered for it; if they committed adultery, they 
were burned in hell-fire therefor. This was the eth- 
ics, and this was the drama, of a period for which 
God was a living person, the Bible an inspired book, 
and the future life a solemn reality. The strong 
sense and healthy genius of England had not yet 
sophisticated itself into the denial of God's holiness, 
and God's revelation, and the authority of the human 
conscience. Men had. not learned, as they have since, 
to rush into sin, and then adjust their creed to their 
passions. Look, now, into: the religious thinking 
of Richard Hooker and John Howe, and feel the 
freshness and freedom that stamp them instanta- 
neously as original minds. They differ much in 
style. We cannot place the involved and careless 
construction of Howe on an equality with the pellu- 
cid, rhythmical flow of Hooker. But both alike are 
profound religious thinkers ; and both alike are sug- 
gestive and original authors. 

But pass into the 18th century, and read the dis- 
courses of Alison and Blair. We have descended 
from the heights of Biblical doctrine to the level of 
natural religion ; from the incarnation, the apostasy, 
the redemption, to the truth that virtue is right and 
vice is wrong ; that man must be virtuous, and all 
will be well. How tame and unsuggestive are these 
smooth commonplaces. How destitute of any en- 
larging and elevating influence upon a thoughtful 



21 



mind. How low the general range of ideas. And 
tlie secret of tlie torpor and tameness lies in the 
fact, that these intellects had never worked their way 
into the deep mines of revelation, and found the ore 
in the matrix. It was an age in which Biblical exe- 
gesis had declined, and they had experienced only 
the more general influences of the written word. 
The living elements themselves, the evangelical dog- 
mas, had never penetrated and moulded their thinking. 
And as we look out into this 19th century, we see 
the same fact. The only originality in the church or 
out of it, in sacred or in secular literature, is founded 
in'faith. We are well aware that the age is fertile, 
and that a rank growth of belles-lettres has sprung 
up during the last twenty-five years which has its 
root in unbelief. But it is a crop of mushrooms. 
There is nothing in it all that will live five hundred 
years. Compare this collection of poems, novels, and 
essays,— these slender attempts of the modern nat- 
uralism to soar with a feeble wing into the high 
heaven of invention, — with the unfaltering, sustained 
sweep of Dante, steeped in religion, and that, too, the 
religion of an intense supernaturalism ; or of Mil- 
ton, whose blood and brain were tinged through and 
through with Hebrew ideas and beliefs. Compare 
the light flutter of the current sentimentalism, with 

" the pride and ample pinion 
That the Theban eagle bear, 
Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air/' 



22 



and tell us where sliall wisdom be found, and where 
is the place of understanding. 

II. But we must pass from this topic, to consider 
a second effect of the exegesis and apprehension of 
the Christian revelation, — and an effect that bears 
more particularly upon the office and functions of the 
pulpit itself. The thorough exegesis and comprehen- 
sion of the written word of God, endows the human 
mind with auiJiority. 

" By what authority doest thou these things ? and 
who gave thee this authority to do these things ? " 
was a question which the chief priests, and the 
scribes, and the elders put to Jesus Christ. If it was 
a natural question for them to ask of the Son of God, 
it is certainly a natural question for the secular and 
especially the unbelieving world to ask of the Chris- 
tian herald. By what right does a mortal man rise 
upon the rostrum, and make positive statements con- 
cerning the origin of the human race, the dark mys- 
terious beginnings of human history, the purposes 
and plans of the Infinite Mind, and conclude with 
announcing the alternatives of eternal salvation and 
eternal damnation ? With respect to these dark and 
difficult problems, all men stand upon a common 
level, if divine revelation is thrown out of the ac- 
count. Apart from the light poured upon them by 
a communication from the Divine Mind, Confucius 
and Socrates have as much right to speculate and 
dogmatize as you or I. By what right, then, does that 



23 



portion of the world wMcIi calls itself Christendom, 
undertake to inform that portion of the world which is 
called Heathendom, concerning God and the future 
life ; concerning the soul, its needs, its sorrows, and 
its doom ? What authority has the Christian man 
above that of the pagan man, in regard to the whole 
subject of religion, and who gave him this authority ? 
Why does not Christendom, as it peers into the dark- 
ness beyond the tomb, look reverently to Moham- 
medanism for light ? Why does Christianity insist 
that Mohammed shall come to the mountain ; and why 
does the mountain refuse to go to Mohammed ? As 
matter of fact, the entire human race is now receiving 
its lessons in theology and religion from only a portion 
of the race. In the outset, this portion which set it- 
self up as the teachers of mankind was only a mere 
fragment of the sum-total, a mere handful of men in 
a corner of Palestine. The proportion has indeed 
greatly altered, during the eighteen centuries that 
have elapsed since the death of Christ ; but the vast 
majority of mankind are still pagan. The pupils 
still immensely outnumber the teachers. By what 
title does a mere fraction of the equally rational and 
equally immortal masses that crowd this planet ar- 
rogate to itself the position of the tutor, and demand 
that the remaining majority take the attitude of the 
pupil? And, to narrow the circle, by what title 
does a small class of men rise up in Christian pulpits, 
and profess to impart instruction to the large congre- 



24 



gations of their fellows and their equals, upon the 
most momentous and the most mysterious of themes ? 
Unless Christendom possesses a superior knowl- 
edge, it has no right to instruct Heathendom ; and 
unless the Christian clergy are endowed with the au- 
thority of a special revelation, and can bring creden- 
tials therefor, they have no right to speak to their 
fellow men upon the subjects of human duty and des- 
tiny. The first and indispensable requisite, conse- 
quently, in both speculative and practical theology, is 
authority ; and this authority must be found in a di- 
rect and special communication from the mind of 
God, or it can be found nowhere. Throw the Scrip- 
tures out of the account, and the whole human race 
is upon a dead level. No one portion of it, no one 
age or generation of it, is entitled to teach another. 
That clear, commanding tone, without which the 
Christian herald has no right to speak, and without 
which the world will not erect its ears and hear, can- 
not issue from ethics and natural religion. It must 
be the impulse and the vibration of the Gospel. " I 
am not ashamed," says St. Paul, "of the gospel of 
Christ : for it is the power of God." Divine revela- 
tion, in his definition, is divine j9c>i/;(5r ; and power is 
at the bottom of authority. Power generally is not 
ashamed, and needs not to be. In an age like this, 
when force is worshipped, when the hero and the 
titan are set up as divinities, it will surely not be dis- 
puted that where there is power there need be no 



hesitation or timidity ; and that whoever is really 
possessed of it, is entitled to speak out with a com- 
manding and an authoritative intonation. By virtue, 
then, and only by virtue of its possession of the liv- 
ing oracles of God, Christendom is entitled to sound 
a trumpet, and tell the world in all its centuries, and 
all its grades of civilization, that he that belie veth 
shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
damned. By virtue of his intuition and mastery of 
inspired ideas and doctrines, the Christian theologian 
and herald is entitled to attempt 

" the height of the great argument, 
Assert eternal providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men." 

1. In applying this topic more particularly to the 
position and duties of the theologian and preacher, 
we remark, in the first place, that the close exegeti- 
cal study of the Scriptures imparts a calm and con- 
scious authority, hy reducing the wliole hody of Holy 
Writ to Tiarmony. The influence of doubt in respect 
to the symmetrical agreement and self consistence of 
the Bible is weakening in the highest degree. No 
sacred orator can be bold and commanding in his 
tone, if he believes, or if he fears, that there are fatal 
contradictions and irreconcilable inconsistencies in the 
written revelation. It is for this reason that infideli- 
ty is now applying its utmost acuteness and ingenui- 
ty, to detect intrinsic and absolute contradictions in 



26 



tlie sacred records. The four Gospels, in particular, 
are the field of operations. If it can be shown, if it 
can be demonstrated, that these biographies of the 
God-man fatally conflict with each other, then the 
portraiture of that Personage who fills all history as 
the sun fills the hemisphere, becomes a fancy sketch, 
and Christianity disappears with its Founder. 

Now, we are certain and confident that the care- 
ful and minute study of the Evangelists, in the light 
of grammar, of philology, and of history, results in 
the unassailable conviction of their trustworthiness. 
The process is one of those profound and unconscious 
ones which bring us to the goal before we are aware. 
The conviction that the four Gospels are organically 
connected, and constitute one living and perfect har- 
mony, cannot be violently and quickly forced upon 
the mind. At first sight the objections and difficul- 
ties fill the foreground ; particularly when protruded 
and pressed upon the notice by the busy and hostile 
critic. But, as when we look upon a grand paintiog, 
in which there is a great variety, and complexity, 
and apparent contrariety, of elements, it requires 
some little time for the eye to settle gradually and 
unconsciously into the point from which the whole 
shapes itself into harmony and beauty, so it requires 
wise delay, and the slow penetration of scholarship 
and meditation, to reach that centre from w^hich all 
the parts of the evangelical biography arrange them- 
selves harmoniously, and all contradiction disappears 



27 



forever. And when this centre is once reached, and 
the intrinsic, natural, artless harmony is once perceiv- 
ed, there is repose, and there is boldness, and there is 
authority. He who speaks of Christ out of this in- 
tuition, speaks with freedom, with enthusiasm, with 
love, and with power. Objections which at first 
seemed acute now look puerile. The piece-meal crit- 
icism, which, like the fly,^' scans the edge of the 
phnth in the great edifice upon which it crawls, dis- 
appears under a criticism that is all -comprehending 
and all-surveying. 

2. And similar to this, in the second place, is the 
influence of a clear exegesis of the dogmatic matter 
of revelation. This results in a self -consistent theolo- 
gical system^ and this endows the mind with authority. 
Say what men may, it is doctrine that moves the 
world. He who takes no position will not sway the 
human intellect. Logical men, dogmatic men rule 
the world. Aristotle, Kant, Augustine, Calvin, — ^these 
are names that instantaneously suggest systems ; and 
systems that are exact, solid, and maintain their place 
from century to century. And when the system is 
not a mere product of the human mind, like a 
scheme of philosophy or a theory of art, but is real- 
ly the scheme and system of God himself imparted 
to his creatures, and certified to them by miracle, by 

* " Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
For tliis plain reason, man is not a fly." 

Pope : Essay on Man, I. 6. 



28 



incarnation, and by the Holy Ghost, — when the body 
of doctrine has a celestial origin, — it endows the 
humble and docile recipient of it with a preternat- 
ural authority. That which is finite can never in- 
spire and embolden the human soul like that which 
is infinite. The human mind is indeed a grand and 
noble intelligence, and we are the last to disparage 
or vilify its products. We look with respect and 
veneration upon the great names in all the literatures. 
We exclaim with Hamlet, " How noble in reason ! 
in apprehension how like a god ! " But when we are 
brought face to face with the problems of religion ; 
when the unknown issues of this existence press heav- 
ily upon the apprehensive soul ; when the vortex of 
eternity threatens to engulph the feeble immortal; 
how destitute of authority and certainty are all the 
utterances and communications of these heroes of 
human literature. When I rise into this plane of 
thought, and propose this class of questions, I need a 
voice from the open sky to assure me ; I demand an 
authority that issues from God himself, before I can 
be certain and assured in my own mind, and still 
more before I can affirm Avith positiveness and power 
to the minds of others. 

It is here that we observe the difference between 
the dogmatism of a philosopher, and that of a theo- 
logian ; between the positiveness of the secular, and 
that of the Christian mind. Compare Immanuel 
Kant with John Calvin. No human being has been 



29 



more successful than the sage of Konigsberg, in giv- 
ing an exact and transparent expression to what he 
himself denominates " pure reason." The crystal un- 
der his chemistry acquires a second crystallization. 
The rational intelligence of man, as developed and 
expressed by him, answers to the description of wis- 
dom in the apocryphal book of Wisdom : " She is 
more mobile than any motion ; she penetrates and 
passes through all things by reason of her pureness." * 
But it is finite reason ; it is human inteUigence only. 
The questions that are raised, and the answers that 
are given, pertain to a limited province. Within 
this province he is clear as the sun, positive, and dog- 
matic of right. He knows whereof he affirms, and 
speaks with a corresponding authority. But when I 
pass these limits, and invite him to pass them, I hear 
another tone. The positlveness and the certainty 
disappear, and we are both alike left to querying and 
vague conjecture. What can he tell me, with confi- 
dence and certainty, concerning the interior and ab- 
solute essence of God ? Does the trinal unity dawn 
within the hemisphere of his " pure reason ? " Does 
he know the name of the first man ? Can he de- 
scribe to me the origin of that dark ground of evil 
which, by his own confession, inheres in every human 
will ? Can he tell me, with authority and certainty, 
when the decaying body is being lowered to its rest- 
ing place in the heart of the earth, that " all that 

* Wisdom, vii. 24. 



30 



dust shall rise ? " Does he know that there is pity 
in those stern and ethical heavens which shut down 
like brass over a guilty and terrified human con- 
science ? The authority and dogmatic certainty of 
the philosopher stop at the limits of his domain; 
and it is here that the authority and certainty of the 
theoloo^ian berai. Turn to the Institutes of the man 
of Geneva, and observe the boldness and his^h cer- 
tainty of that naturally cautious and careful under- 
standing, upon these very themes which make the 
man of Konigsberg to hesitate and waver. Read 
those words with which Calvin closes, as with a clar- 
ion peal, his great argument for the necessity of the 
Reformation, and say whence come the sublime con- 
fidence, and overcoming energy : " We know and are 
verily persuaded that what we preach is the eternal 
verity of God. It is our wish, and a very natural 
one, that our ministry might prove beneficial and 
salutary to the world ; but the measure of success is 
for God to give, not for us to demand. If this is what 
we have deserved at the hands of men whom we 
have struggled to benefit, to be loaded with calumny, 
and stung with ingratitude, that men should abandon 
success in despair, and hurry along with the current 
to utter destruction, then this is my voice, (I utter 
words worthy of the Christian man, and let all who 
are willing to take their stand by this holy profes- 
sion, subscribe to the response,) 'Ply your fagots.' 
But we warn you that even in death we shall become 
the conquerors ; not simply because we shall find, 



31 



even tlirougli the fagots, a sure passage to that up- 
per and better life, but because our blood will ger- 
minate like precious seed, and propagate that eternal 
truth of God which is now so scornfully rejected by 
the world."* This is the positiveness, this is the 
high celestial dogmatism, that is necessitated by 
the reception of Divine revelation. There is no op- 
tion. There may be natural timidity ; there may be 
the shrinking nature of the weeping prophet ; but 
the instant the mind perceives that the Eternal Intel- 
ligence has originated and communicated a series of 
revelations ; the instant the ear hears the " Thus saith 
the Lord," a transformation takes place, and human 
weakness becomes immortal strength. 

We have thus considered^ in a rapid manner, two* 
principal influences and effects of the exegesis and 
apprehension of revealed truth. Originality and 
authority issue from this source, and from no other. 
If systematic theology is to maintain its position 
among the systems of earth ; if it would still, and 
ever, keep the place which Bacon assigned to it, as 
" the sabbath and port of man's labors and pere- 
grinations ; " it must breathe in, and breathe out, 
from every pore and particle, the living afflatus of 
inspiration. By this breath of life it must live. If 
practical theology, if the utterances of the pulpit, 
are to be fresh, spiritual, and com-manding, the sacred 
orator must be an exegete. Every discourse must be 
but the elongation of a text. 

* Calvin : Necessity of the Reformation, sub fine. 



32 



And certainly there never was greater need of 
originality and authority within the province of re- 
ligion, than now. The cultivated unbeliever is fast 
settling down upon the low commonplaces of ethics 
and natural religion, or else is on his way to the arid 
sands of atheism, and all the freshness of his mind is 
being dried up. Rejecting all mystery, which is 
confessedly the parent and nurse of high thinking 
and lofty feeling ; rejecting all supernaturalism, by 
whcih alone God comes into quickening and person- 
al contact with his creatures; throwing out of his 
creed all those truths upon which Christendom rests, 
and without which a Christendom is impossible, and 
reducing the whole credenda and agenda of man to 
the merest and most meagre minimum, — what can 
he do toward the impregnation and fertilizing of the 
human mind ? Look at the two or three religious 
dogmas,* starved and hunger-bitten, which are left to 
the human intelligence after his manipulations, and 
tell us if literature, and art, and philosophy, will be 
characterized by originality if his methods prevail. 
Tell us if pantheism will produce another Shaks- 
peare ; if anti-supernaturalism will produce another 
Milton; if a nerveless, voluptuous naturalism will 
produce another Dante. Unless the coming litera- 
ture of England and America shall receive a fresh 
impulse and inspiration from the old Christian ideas 
which penetrated and enlivened it in the days of its 
glory, the future will witness the utter decline and 



33 



decay of one of the noblest literatures of tlie world. 
The age of sophistry, the age of pedants, the age of 
critics, the age of elegant languor, will come in, and 
the Anglo-Norman mind, like the Greek and the 
Eoman before it, will give place to the bolder and more 
original intelligence, of a more believing and solemn 
race. 

The same remark holds true, when we pass from 
the wide domain of general literature, to a particular 
province in it, like theology and sacred eloquence. 
The Christian pulpit, in this age, is in danger of los- 
ing its originality, because it is tempted to leave the 
written revelation, and betake itself to lower and un- 
inspired sources of thought. Listen to those who 
neglect the constituent and organific ideas of Chris- 
tianity, — the doctrines of sin and guilt, of grace and 
redemption, — and who find their themes in that 
range of truths which every student sees scattered 
over the pages of Plato and Cicero, of Antoninus 
and Seneca, and tell us if they are original and stir- 
ring homiletes. The doctrines of natural religion 
are differentiated from those of revealed, by the fact 
that they will not bear everlasting repetition, and 
constant expansion and illustration. You cannot 
preach year after year upon the immortality of the 
soul and the nature of virtue, and preserve the theme 
ever fresh and new. There is a limit in this direc- 
tion that cannot be passed with safety. But it is not 
so with the distinctively Christian truths. Even the 
3 



34 



dark, solemn theme of human corruption, expounded 
by one who has been instructed out of the written 
revelation, and the thronging, bursting consciousness 
of his own soul, — even this sorrowful and abstractly 
repellant theme, when enunciated in a genuinely Bib- 
lical manner, fascinates the natural man himself like 
the serpent's eye. Such a preacher is always felt to 
be original. Men never charge him with tameness 
and feebleness. And still more is this true of that 
other and antithetic doctrine of the divine mercy in 
the blood of the God-man. This string may be 
struck with the plectrum year after year, century 
after century, and its vibration is ever resonant and 
thrilling, yet sweet and seolian. 

And certainly the age requires in its religious 
heralds and teachers that other characteristic of au- 
thority. If a man speak at all, he must speak as the 
oracles of God ; he must speak oracularly and posi- 
tively. For the intellectual world is now an arena of 
contending ideas and systems. Think you that all 
the dogmatism of the time is within the precincts of 
theology and the church ? Think you that skepti- 
cism stands meek and hesitating, like the ass which 
Sterne describes, who seemed to invite abuse, and to 
say to every passer-by : " Don't kick me, but if you 
will you may ? '' 'No ! all ideas, the false as well as 
the true, all systems, the heretical as well as the or- 
thodox, are positive and assertory. It is no time, 
therefore, for Christianity, — the only system that has 



35 



a right to say to the world, " Thou shalt," and " Thon 
shalt not ; *' the only system that has a right to utter 
its high and authoritative, " He that believeth shall 
be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned ; " 
— ^it is no time for that absolute and ultimate religion, 
in and by which this miserable and ruined race must 
live or have no life, to be deprecatory, and *^ borrow 
leave to be." 

It is the office and duty of a professorship of 
Biblical Literature, to generate and nurture an exeget- 
ical spirit in the rising ministry. This, we think, 
states the real purpose of this part of the theological 
curriculum. The infusion of a genuinely Biblical 
temper into the mind of the theologian and preacher, 
is an aim high enough for the best energies of any 
one. The construction of Biblical doctrines them- 
selves belongs to another department ; the history of 
Biblical doctrines belongs to still another ; and the 
art of putting Biblical doctrines into oratorical forms 
for popular impression belongs to still another. But to 
produce a talent and tact at expounding the very Bib- 
lical words and sentences themselves, and thereby to 
impart to the mind of the rising ministry a Biblical 
tone, and to imbue it with a Biblical spirit, this is 
the great and difficult, yet the noble and genial task 
assigned to the teacher of exegesis. And after all, it is 
the sjyirit of a book, the spirit of an author, which is of 
the chief importance. Pascal has left an instructive 
and quickening fragment upon the "geometrical 



36 



spirit." It is the spirit of demonstration, — ^that bent 
and tendency in an intellectual person which sponta- 
neously inclines him to define accurately whatever is 
capable of definition, and to prove irrefragably what- 
ever is capable of proof. Whoever possesses this 
spirit takes geometry with him wherever he goes. 
Of such a human mind, — the mind of a Pascal, — ^it 
may be said, as Plato said of the Eternal Mind, it 
perpetually geometrizes. And the same is true of 
the Biblical spirit. He who has imbibed it from the 
close and penetrating study of the words, clauses, 
sentences, paragraphs, sections of the sacred volume, 
puts the seal of the Eternal Spirit upon everything 
that he writes, and everything that he utters. The 
written word of God is not only filled with a dis- 
tinctive spirit, but it is also dictated by an Eternal 
Spirit. It has a Spirit for its author, and it has a 
spirit as its inward characteristic. It is a wheel 
within a wheel ; it is a sea within a sea ; it is an at- 
mosphere within an atmosphere. Spiritual in its 
origin, spiritual in its contents, and spiritual in all its 
influences and effects, well may it be the aim of the 
individual Christian, and of the church, to reach and 
acquire the Sjpirit of the Scriptures. There is no dan- 
ger of mysticism in such a striving; and no false 
spiritualism will result from it. Such an endeavor 
to drink in the pure essence of a merely human product 
might result in dreaminess of thought and feeling. 
The undue and constant musing of the New Platonist 



37 



upon tlie Platonic speculations finally destroyed all 
clear thinking and healthy mental action. The effect 
was like that of the forbidden fruit upon Adam and 
Eve. They 

"fancy that they feel 

Divinity within them breeding wings, 

Wherewith to scorn the earth.'* 

But the written revelation is a marvellous combina- 
tion of the divine with the human, of the spiritual 
with the material, of the reason with the understand- 
ing, of the heavenly with the earthly. All the an- 
titheses are blended, and counterpoise each other, with 
wonderful harmony; so that no human mind will ev- 
er become exorbitant and exaggerated by an exclu- 
sive and absorbing study of it. Like the ocean, 
while it has its undulations, and an unfathomed swell 
which no human power can level, it never has moun- 
tains or valleys ; it never exhibits or produces ex- 
tremes. 

It is to such a high oiSce and work as this, that 
you have called me, Fathers and Brethren, Directors of 
Union Seminary. That I do not feel sufficient for 
this thing, I need not say. I cannot bring to this 
chair the accurate grammatical discipline, the solid 
philological learning, and the remarkable geographi- 
cal knowledge of the eminent scholar whom I suc- 
ceed. But I can, I trust, bring to it an ever-deepen- 
ing reverence for the divine Word, a firm confidence 
in its infallibility, and an increasing sense of depend- 



^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 971 759 




